


House on the Beach

by thawrecka



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-07-27
Updated: 2003-07-27
Packaged: 2017-11-20 04:20:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/581247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thawrecka/pseuds/thawrecka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darla had a dream and Angel had a hope.</p>
            </blockquote>





	House on the Beach

There is an acid taste in his mouth.

That's the first thing to go, when they kill you. You come back with smell and sight and hearing sharper than ever, but everything comes in three flavours: sweet blood, diseased blood and dust.

There is an acid taste in his mouth because he is a different kind of dead this time.

Darla is smiling at him, sharp as rose thorns. She has been watching their beautiful boy, the one he gave away again and again, for so long.

"You never could get anything quite right, could you, dearest?" She speaks in a voice like the hiss of a train. "Always too much or too little but never quite there."

He can not speak because then the acid in his mouth will spill.

"Even I would have been a better parent," she continues.

He looks down on their boy, their only, as he wanders on oblivious.

"I had a dream that we were normal and we raised him," she spoke on. "We lived in an apartment by the beach."

Finally Angel spoke, "No one ever taught him to swim. Lilah made it so he could have a family and laughter and the ability to swim."

"I had a garden, and I tended it in the afternoons, while you were at work. He would come home and I would meet his friends."

"He will make something of himself. He'll have a job and a car and, some day, a real family of his own."

"And, even though you loved Buffy, you knew you belonged with me. So you stayed. And we were all together and happy."

"It was just a dream."

"She won't be in this place with us, and neither will he."

Angel sighs, with a mouth full of holy water, and accepts her hand in limbo.


End file.
